


In Which the Author Indulges Considerably

by farrah_yondale



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bearding, F/F, Gay Character, Lesbian Character, M/M, Marriage of Convenience, Mutual Pining, Title is a Placeholder, Trans Character, morbid gay humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-05-14 17:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 15,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14773890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farrah_yondale/pseuds/farrah_yondale
Summary: Trevor Belmont comes from an esteemed vampire hunter clan, which means he has expectations to fulfill: inheriting the holy whip, helping the oppressed and (ugh) marrying a woman. Just when he thinks he’s found a solution to his problems, Dracula’s demon hordes swoop down and destroy everything.Also, a bunch of Speaker children just summoned Dracula’s son into his house by accident and now he has to deal with that?AU where Trevor and Sypha grew up together and they’re both gay.(abandoned)





	1. In Which Trevor Asks for Sypha’s Hand and Puts Himself at Risk of Being Hexed into an Amphibian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Given that this is an AU, Trevor and Sypha are going to have some slight differences in personality. Sypha, due to Trevor’s presence is a little more crude than in canon (still stubborn, no-nonsense and with a strong sense of justice and community, though). While Trevor is a little more subdued since Sypha practically spent their entire childhoods bullying him. He’s still a snarky asshole though, just a little less jaded since he had Sypha and the Speakers to hold him up when Tragedy Struck™. Anyway, enjoy this self-indulgent nonsense.

 “Marry me, Sypha.”

She looks at him like he’s just turned into a toad. Scratch that. Sypha had turned plenty of men into toads, so the sight wouldn’t have stirred such a dramatic response, especially given what had just come out of Trevor’s mouth. He’s quite sure the only reason he isn’t currently finger-less, green and catching flies with his tongue is because Sypha has chosen to spare him in the name of their friendship.

Instead, Sypha crosses her arms and gives him the most unimpressed look she can muster, and Trevor’s not sure if that’s worse.

He slides down on his knees and begs her.

“Sypha, _please_.” He considers sobbing. “My family is going to marry me off. If I have to have sex with a woman, I’ll die. _I’ll die_ ,” he repeats, as if the threat of death might convince her. He sniffs and blows his nose into her robes.

Sypha endures another ten seconds of his fake sobs before shoving him away and sighing in defeat. “Fine, fine. _Fine._ ” Her acquiescence to his request is enough for him to hurriedly move away. “Just stop ruining my only set of clothes.”

“If you marry into my family, you’ll have plenty more.” Why does he still feel the need to convince her? He stands, hoping his height might give him some edge in their impending argument.

“And what? You’re going to shove me in those frilly, ill-fitted dresses you Belmonts put your women in? No thank you. Speaking of which,” she adds. “If I’m marrying you, I get a dowry.”

Trevor feels something sink in his stomach. _That dreaded word_. Speaker women always insisted on getting dowries, while the men insisted on giving them. It was why Speaker women rarely wed outside their own and why Sypha had, thus far, failed to procure any money out of another gullible rich asshole.

“What do you want?” he dares to ask, and tries to ignore the malicious glint in her eyes.

“The knife set.”

Trevor’s sole regret in life was teaching a woman who could bend the elements to her will how to use a weapon he relied on. She’d been eyeing his knives since she had learned to throw them as a child.

“No,” he argues. “You can have the house, the library. You can have the chickens.”

“The chickens are already mine.”

Trevor crosses his arms in response.

“The knife set, or your fate is sealed.”

“Merciless woman.”

“That’s the price you pay for forcing me to marry you.”

“I’m not forcing you.”

“You know I can’t ignore the plight of the oppressed, Trevor Belmont. You’re as good as forcing me.”

Trevor sighs, placing his arms akimbo. He looks to the ground in contemplation for a good second before finally saying, “Fine. You can have the knife set.”

Sypha claps her hands, and her eyes brighten like a little girl offered sweets. And rightfully so. She’s been after the knife set for at least a decade now. She excitedly wraps her arms around his chest and squeezes tight.

When they pull apart, he laughs, “Don’t get too excited or people might think you’re actually in love with me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, please let me know if you're interested in me continuing this because I want to know before I continue down this Dark Path of Unholy Indulgence. This seems so niche and weird and I feel embarrassed for putting this up on the internet. Also, I'm planning for the chapters to be shorter than what I usually write because I want to actually update. Pretend that I know how to finish a multichapter fic. (weeps)


	2. In Which Trevor and Sypha Enter a Marriage of Convenience and Everything Promptly Goes to Shit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Pride, everyone! Here's a chapter of a lesbian and a gay man getting married.

Trevor did not expect the pause after the minister’s speech to last so long. He expected applause shortly after. He stands staring at Sypha’s rightfully strained look for a good few seconds before realizing the hand beside her robe is flexing frantically.

“What’s wrong?” he manages through gritted teeth.

“My illusion isn’t working,” she hisses back nervously.

“We’re...we’re going to have to kiss,” he realizes in horror.

“What?” Trevor’s eyes widen in warning for her to keep her voice down. “No!”

“Sypha,” he hisses, glancing between her and the expectant crowd.

Trevor widens his eyes again at her, as though that might convince her to indulge in the unholy act. When she doesn’t respond—still fluttering her fingers desperately in an attempt to pull up an illusion—he steadies his hands over her shoulders and swears he can feel fire running up his arms. He almost recoils.

“Trevor Belmont, I swear by the Lord of the skies and the earth and everything in between if you force me to kiss you, I will make a prayer mat out of your skin.”

“Finally, I’ll be of some use to you.”

Normally, she would have laughed, but the situation is entirely too dire. With an expectant crowd still in between them and no more time for magic to be cast, Sypha finally realizes that he’s right. They’re going to have to kiss.

She leans up.

“Don’t sweat too hard now, or you’ll melt off all that makeup,” he teases.

“Good riddance.”

The distance between the two of them has never seemed wider. Trevor wants to duck his head quickly towards her, get it over with. But he’s afraid if he startles her, she’ll slap him in front of everyone (instinctually, of course. Sypha would never hit him consciously).

But their kiss, however reluctant, is interrupted by the shattering of glass. The crowd behind them screams. A demon drops down to the pulpit and lets out a shriek.

“Oh, thank God,” they both sigh in unison.

They ignore the pressed glance of the minister. A pressed glance which lasts only for about half a second when he realizes he’s closest to the beast that just dropped down.

Neither of them hesitate. Trevor would be hard-pressed to ever find himself without a knife, and Sypha doesn’t need a weapon when she has magic. She impales the demon on a shard of ice before it can rip the minister in half.

“Thank you,” he gasps, running his hands across a flustered face. “How did it get in here? I thought demons couldn’t enter holy places.”

“Listen, I don’t think demons give a shit—”

“Don’t curse in Church,” Sypha chides.

“I’m Jewish and you’re Muslim and you care about whether I say ‘fuck’ in Church?” Trevor ignores the eyebrow furrow of the minister. His opinion hardly matters now. He feels Sypha’s elbow nudging him. “What?” he says.

Sypha gestures with her chin towards the church entrance. The crowd, which had dispersed out the door is filing back inside in a panic. Vaguely, Trevor can hear screams and shrieks from outside.

“There are more?”

Wordlessly, Sypha shuffles through the crowd and out the door. Trevor follows close behind.

The sky is a beautiful gradient of reds and orange at twilight, in absolute contrast to the bloodbath on earth. Speakers and hunters and civilians all warding off black-winged demons in whatever way they know how. Despite their effort, there’s still a handful of bodies strewn about the streets.

It shocks him. Trevor has seen his fair share of violence—it comes with the trade—but never a peace so suddenly shattered. He had woken up this morning to his sisters taming his mother’s hawks, had eaten breakfast complaining of the bland taste, fed the chickens and swept the floor and did all these mundane tasks that seemed like the opposite of some impending apocalypse.

“I need my whip,” Trevor starts, but is hurriedly cut off when he finds that exact thing shoved into his arms.

“Sorry I’m late,” his mother apologizes absentmindedly.

“Late?” Trevor snaps. “You missed the entire ceremony!”

“Don’t argue with me when there’s demons loose everywhere,” Sonia snaps back. “What did you two do? You know you were supposed to take wedding vows, right? Not unearth some old alchemic equation to open up hell.”

“I knew we shouldn’t have trusted that minister.”

That’s all the exchange the two of them have time for, frankly, when another couple dozen beasts screech and rise from the horizon. They hover over the town, circling the air like vultures. The family’s bestiary had never made much mention of the levels of intelligence of Dracula’s hordes, but Trevor surmises by the way they’re scanning the area that they don’t just operate on the smell of blood alone. They look for companions who might be in need of assistance.

And Sypha seems to be doing a pretty good job of taking them out on her own. The hordes notice and send four winged beasts after her. One claws at her, tries to tear at that pretty face, but Trevor and Sonia are quick to defend her. Trevor whips its hand out of the way while his mother jams her sword through its chest.

As Sonia draws the blade out, its chest swells. It dies quickly with a screech.

“Thank you,” Sypha manages with a sigh. The three of them close in on each other, back to back. Sonia lets out a shrill whistle.

“Let’s see if my damn hawks aren’t being stubborn today,” Sonia says, shivering slightly. Trevor’s mother had never been particularly good with the cold and Sypha’s proclivity for ice magic wasn’t helping her in that regard. “If they even have a chance… _Damn_ , woman.” Only then do both Sypha and Trevor realize Sonia’s staring at Sypha. “The hell do we need hawks and whips for? The Belmont clan should just switch to magic, honestly. You did good, Trevor. Your kids will be much better off.”

Trevor and Sypha exchange exasperated glances.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, also, [here's](http://dykcula.tumblr.com/post/168129335962/i-got-so-invested-in-this) what Sonia is supposed to look like, since her original design is a travesty.
> 
> Also! Thank you for all the comments! I got them all at once and I didn't know how to respond so I just avoided it ; ___ ; but thank you! <3


	3. In Which a Deliciously Sexy Vampire Manifests in Trevor’s House But He’s Not as Deliciously Sexy as Trevor Initially Hoped

“Where’s Katherine?”

Trevor shuffles up beside Helena and Miriam, both of whom are looking harrowed and overwhelmed by the continuous onslaught of the hordes. Helena grips her whip tighter, switches between lashing it and drawing the short sword in her other hand. Miriam keeps a distance from the beasts, whistling and clicking at the hawks to her command.

“At home, with Letitia. She’s keeping her safe,” Helena answers promptly with a grunt. The beast impaled on her sword slumps to the ground.

“What is she going to do? Make a fortress out of books to ward off the demons?”

“She’d better not,” Sypha says for the first time in a while, eyes flashing with menace.

Right, her dowry was at stake. “How can you think of your dowry at a time like this?” Trevor asks. Instinctually, he slides closer to Miriam’s side. Without any weapons, she’s vulnerable up close and he’d rather not leave her open to an attack. Never mind the overprotectiveness he’s always felt for his youngest sister. And never mind that Miriam _knows_ this and gives him an irritated glance in response. Trevor, who’s used to women’s pressed glances, doesn’t bother to be offended.

“How was the wedding?” Miriam asks in that always-cool voice of hers.

“Maybe you would know if you actually showed up.”

“And risk watching Sypha burn you alive on impulse?” Miriam quips back. “On second thought…”

“Yes, yes, violence against your brother is oh-so funny to you all.”

“It’s nothing personal, Trevor,” Helena replies. “It’s just what you deserve.”

“You know, I think I could get used to this family,” Sypha says.

Trevor resists the urge to pout. “Glad to know if the demons don’t kill me tonight, one of you will.”

As he says this, one of the beasts comes dangerously close to clawing his ribcage off. Trevor wasn’t particularly religious, but he could have sworn there was a God, if only because some higher power clearly had a vested interest in making Trevor eat his own words.

He’s saved only by Sypha’s reflexes. She pulls him roughly towards her by the collar, conjuring a wall of ice between them and the demon.

“ _Please_ ,” Helena calls out, between grappling with another demon. “Do not tempt fate, Trevor.”

But just as she says this, the hordes seem to draw back. A few of them crawl on all fours, sniffing the air and retreating like hounds being called back to their master.

“It’s morning,” Miriam realizes. Trevor glances at the sky. It’s mostly a blur at this point with sleep-deprivation marring his view, but faintly, he can make out the sun crawling along the horizon. There’s a warm glow beneath the layers of clouds.

Helena collapses onto her back.

“I’m going to sleep,” she sighs.

“Get up,” Trevor says, digging his boot into her hip. “We’re not carrying you home.”

Helena doesn’t move.

 

After a good hour of trying to pry Helena out of her self-induced coma and another fifteen minutes of walking, Trevor is finally at the front door of his house. As much as he hates going back to it on most days, it’s not the first time he’s relieved to see it. Mostly because “home” to Trevor just means a place where he can lie face-down and pass out for twelve hours after a particularly rough night.

And given that last night involved pretending to be in love with a woman and fighting a relentless onslaught of demons, Trevor’s quite sure he’ll be out cold for at least two days.

“Excuse me,” Helena says, shoving past him and Sypha and through the door.

Miriam quickly follows, hawk perched over a gloved hand and almost smothers Trevor in the process. She pauses at the threshold only to turn and say, “Sorry, Sypha, we’d be polite and let you through first, but that would mean sparing Trevor of trying to act like a gentleman.” She and her sister titter.

Trevor’s too tired right now to do anything but sigh. He gestures for Sypha to pass first. She seems to be taking in stride. Or maybe she’s tired. Or maybe the hour where she went to go back with the Speakers didn’t go too well.

The minute Trevor walks inside, he can hear his mother screaming. Helena motions for them all to follow her up the stairs in silence.

“—Done _what_ to upset the Church?” Trevor manages to hear on his ascent up the stairs. “My son just married last night _for the Church’s sake_ —”

“To a Speaker,” someone else responds calmly. Trevor recognizes it as the minister from last night and his stomach drops into his balls.

“So what?” Sonia snaps back. “What’s wrong with Speakers? If it weren’t for one of them, your ass would be in a demon’s bowels by now!”

“Lady Belmont, I’m just the messenger. And it’s just…” His voice drops to a whisper. “They’re not even Christian.”

“So what? The children will be Christian.”

“Will they?”

Trevor and the three women beside him exchange glances. He’s decided he’s heard enough and ushers them all up the stairs.

Before Trevor can make it to his bedroom—to sleep, to peace, even if he had to share it with Sypha now—Helena grabs him around the neck and gives him a peck on the cheek.

“We left you gifts,” Miriam says with a wink.

“In the form of a _dashing_ young man,” Helena practically croons and makes very unflattering kissing noises unbefitting of her stature. She turns briefly to Sypha. “And oh, if you want to sleep in our rooms, Sypha, you’re welcome to.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Trevor groans, jarring the door to his room open. “Can you two give it a rest?”

Trevor thought he’d seen and dealt with enough tonight. He wanted nothing more than to sleep, to finally lay in silence without his sisters mocking him at every turn. And then he sees what’s lying on his bedroom floor.

_“Help…_ ”

There’s a man on the floor. _Bleeding_. In fact, the entire room is covered in blood, and Trevor wonders how he even managed to register the person on the floor before all the blood on the sheets and tile.

He parts his lips to beg again, and then Trevor realizes something else: this is not a man, but a vampire, fangs tremoring slightly around words Trevor can’t understand.

“You two weren’t kidding,” Sypha says. She never failed to surprise Trevor at how calm she remained in the direst of circumstances.

“What the fuck?” Trevor swivels around to his sisters for an explanation.

“I swear we were joking!” Miriam squeals in fright. Helena just looks on in shock.

“Trevor…” she starts. But before Trevor can register the source of her worry, it’s too late. He tries to dive in and catch the man before he falls, but he’s already fainted in a pool of his own blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone, I hope you enjoyed. This is gonna be my last update until July since I have exams, so sorry if you were hoping for actual consistency from me.


	4. In Which There is a Slight Interlude of Drama

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! There's a bit of a content warning in this chapter for a child being hit and some vague homophobia! I don't like making shows of stuff like this, so hopefully it's not too much to swallow and this definitely isn't going to be a defining feature of this fanfic. I only like fun and games and morbid gay humor as a coping mechanism.

The last thing Sypha Belnades had any vested interest in doing after an evening of marrying a man she didn’t particularly want to marry and warding off Satan’s hellspawn for over ten hours on a night of hardly any sleep due to anxiety of the aforementioned marriage—Sypha inhales sharply—was drag a bleeding vampire across the lawn.

But she did that, and she helped Trevor hide him in the chicken coop, and she dearly prayed that this was not some kind of microcosm of the rest of their marriage.

The chickens are awake at this hour. Better for them. Sypha didn’t want either of them to have their eyes pecked out for waking them in the middle of the night.

“Why are we doing this?” she asks, shooing one of the hens away from her feet.

“Where else are we supposed to hide him?”

“Why are we hiding him in the first place?”

Trevor grunts as the man’s boot catches on the wood of the threshold. “Because he has a pulse. And a heartbeat. I don’t think he’s a vampire, at least not fully.”

Sypha muses on that thought.

“And his wound…” Trevor continues. The man hisses reflexively as Trevor’s hand runs over it but doesn’t seem oriented enough to protest otherwise. “It’s already healing but it looks…cursed. Almost like it was inflicted by Dracula or at least someone as powerful as him. An ordinary demon couldn’t leave a wound like that. I think he’s on our side, if anything.”

“Or it’s just a petty feud between demons turned violent,” Sypha counters.

“Belmont!” a familiar voice calls. Sypha and Trevor are snapped out of their argument and hurriedly rush and whisper and shove the man deeper in the coop. A chicken squawks. Trevor and Sypha shuffle to shut the coop door behind them.

“Uh…hi,” Trevor says, folding bloody hands behind his back. Sypha doesn’t see the point, when the evidence is all over their clothes.

“Rough night, huh?” the man laughs. Sypha knows she’s seen him before but can’t pin his name. “What was all that?’

“I’ve no idea,” Trevor admits. “But I’m sure we’ll figure it out soon enough.”

He laughs again. He doesn’t seem at all concerned with the blood covering the two of them, or the fact that a demon horde swept through the village last night, or anything really. Sypha wonders if he’s an escaped sociopath. Maybe jail is the place she recognized him from.

“How’s married life?” Sypha tries to cover up her flinch.

“Uh, fine,” Trevor stutters, glancing at her. _He noticed_.

“Well, I’ll leave you two alone then. Have a good day!”

“You too…” Trevor trails off. The minute he’s out of hearing distance, he turns to Sypha, snaking his arm around her hips. This time, even she’s surprised at her own flinch and reflexively pulls away from him.

“Sypha…” There’s a note of gentleness in his voice, which concerns Sypha more than anything. He was never gentle unless he genuinely felt the need to be. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she says immediately.

Trevor doesn’t seem satisfied with that answer.

 

“You _told_ the minister we’re _Jewish_?” Sonia Belmont screeches so loud, Trevor has to physically fight himself not to cover his ears.

Sypha sits across the table from him, staring over her mug with a set of innocent, blue eyes. _You’re on your own_ , they say.

Rightfully so. If any woman in Wallachia was more of a terror than Sypha Belnades, it was Sonia Belmont. God had royally fucked him by having him born in the vicinity of both these women. And he had willingly married one of them.

“I didn’t really _tell_ him,” Trevor explains, voice hesitant. Careful, rather. He liked to pretend he was diplomatic and not just scared shitless of his mother whipping both his testicles off. “It just…came out in the stress of the moment…”

Sonia scoffs. “Oh, it just came out? It just came out?” She gestures out vaguely towards the window. “Why don’t you just go and roast the whole family over a bonfire, why don’t you? Just take your wife—and all the Speakers for that matter—and just throw them into a pyre? Why do you want to die so badly?”

“Ma…” Trevor whines, letting his head slump onto the table.

“Ma, give it a rest.” _God have mercy on him_. Helena drags her feet lazily down the stairs and into the kitchen. Her hair is a mess and she’s still wearing her riding gear, not having bothered to change even after cleaning up the mess in Trevor’s bedroom. “You’ll wake up the whole house.”

“Good.” Sonia doesn’t seem to want to let up on anyone this morning. “What are you doing, sleeping in this late, anyway? You should be up by now.”

“We were up all night fighting demons, Ma—”

“And I’m awake. And I’m old. You all are young and you still can’t manage to get up. _What did I do?”_ she wails, suddenly. “What did I do to deserve such ungrateful—”

“Ma.”

“—Lazy—”

“Ma,” Trevor tries.

“—Ill-mannered—”

“Ma!”

“—Uncultured, hateful, awful children,” Sonia hurriedly finishes. “What?” In the moment she pauses, there’s enough silence for them to hear shouting from upstairs. Followed by a sharp slap and a child crying.

Trevor’s chair skids across the floor as he pushes himself up. He doesn’t bother to say anything or even wait for Sypha, ignoring the perplexed look on her face. He rushes past Helena, who doesn’t protest. Why would she? Trevor’s already in a foul mood and nothing sets him off faster than the sound of that slap.

“Katherine!” Trevor slams Letitia’s bedroom door open.

Letitia is sitting on her bed, hands folded in her lap like she’s done absolutely nothing worthy of guilt. When Trevor slams the door open, she doesn’t flinch or jump. She looks at him over a set of thick glasses and narrowed brows like he’s a delivery boy barging into her room, and she is displaying a generous amount of patience by enduring his presence.

Katherine—sweet, gentle, six-year old Katherine, with her mother’s hair and nose and her uncle’s eyes—stands soaked in her nightgown, sobbing into her hands.

“She wet the bed,” Letitia explains, as if that explained anything.

“You don’t need to hit her,” Trevor chides. His fists clench reflexively.

“Don’t tell me how to raise my own child,” Letitia almost hisses. That was already enough to incite violence in her brother, but Letitia loved to push things too far, so she continues, “And what would you know? You’re not even a real man.”

Trevor comes dangerously close to raising his own hand against her. Helena pulls him back.

“Trevor…” she tries, tugging on his arm gently. He feels another hand on him—Sypha’s probably, but he doesn’t bother to turn and check.

“You think I shouldn’t discipline my own child just because father hit you so hard, you started looking at men.”

Trevor starts forward and it’s only the strength of Sypha and Helena’s arms pulling on his that keeps him from drawing a weapon. He’s still biting his tongue, if only for Katherine’s sake. He chooses to say nothing and instead pulls out of Helena’s grasp.

Katherine is still sobbing uncontrollably. One glance at her and Trevor sweeps the child up in his arms, ignoring the stench of urine and sweat clinging to her.

“Hey!” Letitia starts forward with a sudden rush of violence. “Don’t lay your disgusting hands on my child, you—”

There’s a loud bang. Trevor sees his sister go flying against the wall before he’s even registered what’s happened. Sypha flies past him, as fast as the gust she had just conjured from her hands, and grabs a fistful of Letitia’s collar.

“Speak to my husband like that again and I’ll skewer you on an ice shard like all the other demons lying dead outside,” she hisses, leaning over her.

“Your _husband_?” Letitia scoffs. If she had inherited anything from the Belmont line, it was her fearlessness. Or maybe she was just ignorant of what Sypha could do to her. Trevor presses Katherine’s wracking frame closer to him. “Don’t make me laugh. You two couldn’t even—”

Trevor’s grateful Sypha shuts her up with her hand. He didn’t want to hear anything his sister had to say about the two of them.

“I told you,” Sypha continues, voice icy cold. “Not to speak to my husband like that. If you can’t control yourself, then I can do it for you.”

When Sypha lets go, Letitia sits up eyebrows furrowed like she’s about to say something again. Only she can’t because her mouth won’t open at all.

Letitia lets out a muffled scream in fright. She thrashes out of Sypha’s grasp, continuing to protest in muffled words.

“Don’t worry, it’s not permanent,” Sypha assures. Trevor feels a chill run up his spine. The minute Letitia realizes her current condition is due to Sypha’s magic, her fear and confusion evaporate. She sits up and lets out another series of muffled words that Trevor suspects might have included a few curses.

Sypha stands and turns to Trevor. “Let’s go,” she says in her normal voice.

 

“How did you do that?”

Trevor lays over his bed— _their marriage bed,_ a voice in Sypha’s head cackles and it sends her heart lurching—patting Katherine’s shoulder. She had sobbed in her uncle’s chest about her fears of the demon hordes and her shame about wetting the bed. It was amazing how open a child could be when they felt safe. Sypha had washed her, changed her into new clothes and then laid her over their bed where she fell straight to sleep. Even without Trevor patting her to sleep, she probably would have knocked out immediately.

“Shut your sister up?” Sypha asks. Unlike her husband and niece, she stands awkwardly away from the two of them. She’s dead on her feet, but she would have rather crawled through a poisonous mire than lay in that bed. “It’s necromancy. I took the dead tissue in her mouth and used it to suture her mouth closed.”

“That’s advanced magic.” Trevor’s eyebrows lift up as he says this. “I didn’t know you could do that. Why don’t you lay down, Sypha?” he adds, seeing her tremble. “You’re starting to resemble one of the corpses you have a habit of animating back to life.”

Sypha huffs. “Aren’t I lucky to be your wife? Lavishing me with compliments on our wedding night.”

“Come into bed with me and I’ll lavish you with even more.”

It’s not unusual for him to flirt as a joke. Or for her to joke back. But tonight his husky voice and wink feel all too real, and she reflexively turns away, steadying herself over the dresser.

That voice evaporates immediately, however. “Sypha? What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing,” she says, but even knows as she says it how unconvincing it sounds. Her breath shakes.

“Sypha.” She closes her eyes, presses her lips together in irritation. “Talk to me.”

Sypha turns back around. “It’s nothing,” she repeats.

Trevor looks the opposite of convinced. “Come here,” he says.

“What?”

“Just come here.”

He’s being annoying. And doting. Just because he managed to calm Katherine down and put her to sleep, he thinks he can do the same with Sypha.

How heroic. Sypha resists the urge to roll her eyes.

But she listens, anyway, because the only way to pacify Trevor now is to listen to him. She kneels by the bed, propping up her arms on the mattress.

“What?” she demands again. It comes out less intimidating than she hoped on account of sleep deprivation. She lays her head down over her arm. She can feel sleep tugging her eyes closed.

He gives her a crooked smile. “Do you want me to sing you to sleep?”

“Have mercy,” Sypha cries. “If not for me, then for your poor niece. She’ll wake up thinking there’s another demon horde coming for her.”

“You wound me, my dear wife.”

Sypha thinks of a handful of responses to that, but she says none of them. The urge to sleep is too strong and she finds herself drifting away before she can open her mouth to tell him to die. Idiot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this rate, it's going to take me another 10 chapters to actually get to the plot. Woe is me.


	5. In Which Sypha Has a Horrible Time (Pesky Feelings)

Sypha comes back to the surface of consciousness like she’s drowning. Hanging in the middle of the water, not quite sinking and not quite floating either. She wakes up with a gasp.

The first thing she’s acutely aware of is that her left arm has gone numb. After a beat of visceral panic— _did something get her?_ —she realizes it’s from the way she slept. The second thing she notices is that Trevor is in the same place he was before she had gone to sleep: lying beside Katherine, still patting her shoulder.

“You dozed off,” he says, looking slightly concerned. “What’s wrong?” he asks when she sits up in a panic.

Sypha runs a hand through her hair. “Nothing.” She realizes it’s slick with sweat and stares at her hand as if it were covered in some glowing, magical substance instead of a normal body secretion.

“You’ve said that three times already and I didn’t believe you the first time.”

Sypha inhales and bites her tongue over a choice of words she wouldn’t have dared utter had Katherine been conscious. He’s prodding. Trevor only prods Sypha when she needs it, which only irritates her further.

“Just because we’re married doesn’t mean I have to obey you now. Shut up and mind your own business.”

Trevor blinks at her sudden hostility. But he says nothing.

She can’t bring herself to make eye contact with him. She’s filled with the sudden urge to run away from him as far as possible. It makes her feel so childish, but in the messy storm of her mind, she can’t bring herself to do anything else. She stands, jars the door to his bedroom open and leaves before he can prod her further.

She’s relieved he doesn’t call out after her.

 

Sypha goes back to the chicken coop for comfort. As she always does, because she loves chickens. They’re stupid and soft and make eggs, which Sypha decided at the tender age of five were the most nutritious food in the world. So she had laid claim over the Belmont family’s coop as a tyrannical child and made it her retreat when her world broke down.

Except now there’s a half-dead vampire laying in it.

He stirs when Sypha jerks the door open. Her heart lurches for a second. She’s not sure if he’ll attack her, even with those wounds, or whose side he’s on exactly. But she does nothing at first and lets him regain his bearings before engaging with him.

He sits up, gloved hand going to his head and moans. “I…what happened?” His voice is raspy. Sypha gives him another second to adjust before realizing that a chicken had been under him. A chicken which is currently not moving.

“Nasir-ud-Din?” she cries. “You suffocated her!”

The man sits up straight in fright, looking around him to see _whom_ exactly he’s suffocated by accident.

“That’s the chicken’s name,” Trevor’s voice comes from behind Sypha. She’s not even vaguely surprised that he came running after her.

“She named her chicken Nasir-ud-Din? Isn’t that a man’s name?”

“It’s a fucking chicken, she can name it whatever she wants.” Sypha might have appreciated his defense of her naming choices if her face weren’t currently buried in Nasir-ud-Din’s feathers.

The vampire opens his mouth to continue the argument and seems to realize how stupid this whole thing is. “Well—you know what? It doesn’t matter. Where am I?”

“In the Belmont family’s chicken coop. Look, you made her fucking cry,” he adds when Sypha begins to sob into her chicken.

“ _You murdered my chicken!_ ” Sypha’s head shoots up briefly to scream this and then she buries her head back into her beloved’s corpse.

“Anyway,” Trevor continues. “Who are you and who gave you the right to die in my house?”

“I am Adrian Tepes,” the man explains over Sypha’s bawling. “Did you say Belmont?”

“I did. I’m Trevor…Belmont,” he answers, leaning over the doorframe. He presses his hand to Sypha’s hair. “And this is Sypha Belnades. Or at least it’s supposed to be. I think someone came in and replaced my wife with a fake amidst all the confusion last night.”

Sypha sniffs and whimpers into her dead chicken.

Trevor glances at her with a pitiful look and then continues, “Would I be right to assume you’re on our side?”

“You would be.”

“ _I hate you both!_ ” Sypha screeches, tearing herself out of the coop clutching the hen corpse to her chest.

She doesn’t wait to hear what Trevor has to say, far too occupied with crying uncontrollably to care. She’s halfway down the road before she even realizes where she’s headed. She’s at the edge of town where she can clearly see the rise of the Carpathians.

Sypha doesn’t fear getting lost. The Speakers had traveled all over Wallachia. She knew all the country’s roads and shortcuts like every crease in her palm. She had taken this path from Fieni into the Carpathians at least a dozen times in her life and could probably make it through its rugged terrain in the dead of night.

The sun is at its median once she reaches the entrance to the mountainside. Only when she sits down to catch her breath does Sypha realize exactly how exhausted she is. The crying and the fear only added to her already sleep-deprived haze. She had only slept a few minutes over Trevor’s bed.

Sypha leans back against the rock, pulls her legs in and lets herself drift off again in the soft of her dead chicken’s feathers.

 

When Sypha wakes up, it’s to the sound of a shrill screech.

She’s almost relieved when she blinks to the dark red sky. Good. She’s in hell and she can finally just burn for eternity instead of deal with the hundreds of dilemmas that plague her mortal existence.

It’s short lived relief, because she just as quickly realizes that she’s still alive. If the dead chicken in her arms is anything to go by. She doesn’t remember any Speaker teachings about chickens going to hell.

Then she panics. If this is anything like the onslaught like last night, she’d be hard pressed to fight them all off on her own.

Her first thought is to turn back. _Trevor and the others needed her_. But she’d be too exposed out in the open and would only return to the Belmont household in pieces. She’d rather try her luck with the mountainside, where she might be able to avoid them altogether.

Sypha presses her chicken’s corpse to her side and begins her ascent up the mountain. She’s more concerned with where her feet are than anything else, and only remembers the onslaught of the demon hordes when she hears more shrieking. She glances back, doesn’t see anything descending down her and decides that’s good enough to keep walking.

Except apparently not. She takes another few steps before realizing something dark is hurling itself straight at her. Multiple somethings. Sypha doesn’t hesitate, eases a blue light over her fingertips and flexes her hand up as they reach closer. Two demons are caught between an array of icicles, screeching and writhing in her trap. She silences them with a block of ice overhead.

Of course. Sypha was carrying a corpse with her. She knew the demon hordes didn’t take after dead things, but they could still smell them from a village away. Corpses didn’t move. Therefore, whatever had to be moving the scent of the dead body had to be alive. And therefore food.

Sypha considers tossing the corpse to the side. She already ran so far with it, and considering that it had taken her all of four seconds to rid the world of two more demons even with Nasir-ud-Din’s dead body pressed to her, she figured she might as well keep it with her.

She would quickly come to regret that decision.

 

Six paces forward and the demons realize a human has strayed from the herd.

Sypha eventually does settle for tossing her dead chicken aside. But she has nowhere to run now and the hordes have caught onto her scent. Maybe they see her as a threat, when she can take out half a dozen of them on her own.

They quickly overwhelm her. One takes a chunk of cloth and blood from her arm. In her haste to dodge, she runs into another set of fangs, screaming as teeth dig into her shoulder. Sypha rips away and feels another beast descending on her. She can feel her head grow hazy from the blood loss.

She’s doomed.

Sypha’s so sure those teeth rip out her throat. She’s grateful God had the mercy to make her not feel the pain of it all, that she could die without being tortured. Her eyes flicker open briefly to the blurry outline of a woman, dark hair and dark braids around a gentle face, and the last thing Sypha thinks before losing herself in darkness is, _How in the hell did I make it to heaven?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to update after so long with sub-part content, but pppttthh *throws this at all of you*


	6. In Which Trevor Attempts to Bully a Child (But Fails Because It’s Common Knowledge Not to Bully a Speaker Child Unless You Wish to Die Miserably)

“She’ll be fine.”

The vampire—demon? Human with unusually sharp canines?—doesn’t seem particularly convinced. His eyes don’t leave the horizon, even after Sypha’s silhouette has long disappeared over it.

“You said Tepes,” Trevor goes on, trying to prod him.

“Yes,” the man answers despondently. “Son of Dracula and Lisa Tepes.”

“That would make you a dhampir.”

Adrian smiles. “Very observant. Truly, you are worthy of the Belmont title.”

“Are you always this sarcastic with new people or am I just that charming?”

“It wasn’t sarcasm,” Adrian assures. “It was a genuine compliment.”

Trevor has no response to his cheek. He’s too exhausted. And as much as he doesn’t want to admit it, he’s worried about Sypha. But there’s no point chasing after her when he knows she would just set his trousers on fire if he tried to follow her. So he doesn’t risk it and keeps trying to tell himself that she’s perfectly capable of fending for herself.

“How did you end up on my bedroom floor?”

“The way most men do, I’m sure.”

Trevor flinches visibly at that. He understands it’s a joke given Adrian’s light-hearted tone and perpetual smile, but it hits too close to his insecurities for him to not want to worm his way out of a response.

He tries to be serious. “Really, though.”

“Did you hear of the woman that was burned for witchcraft at Targoviste last year?”

Trevor tries to think of what that has to do with his question, but he plays along anyway. “Yes. The Speakers told us the locals saw an apparition of Dracula manifest through the fire and threaten them with genocide. But Dracula has been inactive for the last two decades at least. We thought it was baseless rumor when we failed to find anything else more substantial.”

“It wasn’t.”

There’s a pause. Adrian makes a face Trevor can’t quite comprehend. Something like mourning or regret or anger or all of it mixed in together. “It was real. The woman who was murdered was my mother. My father threatened Wallachia with a genocide and he’s giving it to them now. I tried to stop him over the last year, convince him that my mother would not have wanted this. But he attacked me. I was about to run. But then I saw a light and last I remember, I was in your room.”

“A light? What did it look like?”

It seems a terrible response to hearing of someone’s mother dying and their father swearing revenge on all of humanity for the act, and Adrian expresses his annoyance with pressed lips.

“Yes, a light. It was blue, and something like a circle opened up beneath my feet. Is that relevant?” Adrian asks, sounding somewhat offended.

Trevor ignores him. “Yes. Because I think I might know who summoned you.”

 

Sypha wakes up, not in heaven, but in a warm bed in someone’s cottage.

It smells almost like the Belmont household. Old, warm, faintly of magic. The walls and furniture all seem to be made of dark wood. Any surface that doesn’t have a candle on it is covered in a pile of books.

Sypha rises in bed, pulling the covers up with her. She realizes she’s naked underneath, save for a shift that replaced the usual robes she wore, which hang dripping wet over a chair near Sypha’s feet.

She flinches at a sharp rap on the door. “May I come in?”

“Y-yes!” Sypha calls back.

The door opens to the same woman from earlier: dark skin, dark hair in long, thick braids. And her eyes. Glassy and green and so strangely alluring and calming at the same time.

“Are you a _hur al ayn_?” Sypha blurts out and then feels her cheeks heat. She wants to throw the blanket over her face and die. Blood loss really did a number on the filter over her mouth.

“Am I a what?” the woman replies, lips twitching ever so slightly with amusement.

“N-nothing!”

The woman takes it all in stride. She sits at the edge of the bed and places a soft hand over Sypha’s thigh and asks, “How are you feeling?” Her voice has a gentle lilt to it, like the rise and fall of ocean waves. Sypha can feel herself drowning in it.

“Alive,” Sypha responds. “Which is a vast improvement from when you first saw me.”

The woman chuckles. “I’m glad. I’m sorry, I had to undress you to tend to your wounds. And I washed your robes for you,” she adds. “I would have left you another change of clothes but I assume a Speaker would rather walk about naked than wear any of the dresses I own.”

“You’d be correct in that assumption.”

The woman lets out another laugh. “You’re lucky I at least had that shift. I don’t know if I could bear watching you walk around naked—although I certainly have endured a number of patients who’ve done that,” she concludes bitterly.

It’s Sypha’s turn to giggle. The woman smiles.

“I’m Julia Laforeze,” she introduces. “And you are?”

“Sypha Belnades.”

 

Trevor’s grip tightens over the tree branch above him. He stops suddenly, and Adrian, none-the wiser, collides into his back. Trevor says nothing to that, apparently more engrossed in whatever he’s found and ignores Adrian rubbing his nose.

“Look,” he finally says when all Adrian does is give him a pressed glance.

He sees the bones and feathers and children’s toys littered over the forest floor and can’t imagine why he should be impressed. “A junkyard. Is this what Belmonts consider a valuable find?”

Trevor ignores his quip. “It’s Speaker magic. Specifically Speaker children. Before they’re old enough to properly control their magic, they use items to channel it. Toys or whatever they find on the ground they like. I figured the circle opening up to a blue light was a Speaker summoning spell.” Adrian takes a step towards the pile of junk and kicks something’s femur aside. “It looks like I was right.”

Adrian doesn’t really care how proud Trevor is about being right. Instead he answers, “How many times have you been spirited away against your will by a Speaker to know that?”

“Too many.”

Adrian prods one of the feathers on the ground with the tip of his boot. He wants to judge Speakers for their terrible choice in summoning items, but he can’t fault children for having a fascination with the dead or with odd things they find in the woods.

“Now we just need to figure out who. And why,” Trevor says.

“And how do you plan to do that?”

Trevor cracks his knuckles. “By bullying them into submission.”

 

“I need to get back.”

One meal and a cup of hot tea bring her back to her senses. Sypha remembers storming off in a fit, the onset of the night horde, the fact that the Belmont family probably had need of her.

She doesn’t wait for Julia to respond. Sypha inches over, out of the sheets and presses her hand to her still damp robes. Fire magic worked wonders to dry clothes. It’s as if they were never wet in the first place.

Julia looks hesitant to let Sypha go, but takes another sip of her tea and says, “You can use magic.”

“Yes. And so can you. You couldn’t sense it?”

Nothing in Julia’s face gives her away, but given her hesitancy, Sypha surmises it’s something she doesn’t want to talk about. Most magicians can sense one another, the way any master of any craft can pick on subtleties that would give their profession away.

“Stay,” Julia demands instead. “It’s almost nightfall. The hordes will not touch you here.”

Sypha glances out the window. She had spent most of the day asleep or regaining her bearings, she did not realize it was already evening. She would not make it back to Fieni in time to do anything but pass out and die.

When Sypha hesitates, Julia says again, “What help would they need that you could give them now? They’ve survived one night of a horde attack without you.”

“I suppose so.”

 

Trevor Belmont was not in the habit of underestimating Speaker children. Sypha had been a Speaker child once, and she was an absolute terror. He chides himself. He should have foreseen this.

But he didn’t, and now he’s firmly tied to a tree at the complete mercy of a handful of seven-year olds.

Worse still, Adrian only seems to be reveling in his suffering. He sits perched over a branch on the same tree Trevor is tied to, and watches from above like he might eagerly consume the words of a particularly riveting story.

The tallest of the children brandishes a stick and shoves it an inch from Trevor’s face. “Who are you and why were you trespassing our territory, demon?” they demand. It’s not exactly threatening when they’re half Trevor’s height and their thin arms would have put the twig in their hands to shame.

One of the smaller ones interjects, “Isn’t he Sypha’s bitch?”

“Hey,” Trevor chides over a few squeals of laughter. “You shouldn’t use words like that.”

“Oh, my,” comes Adrian’s smooth and irritating voice from above. Trevor swallows a growl. “I didn’t know the Belmont cared so much for etiquette.”

“Anyway, if you want to fight a real demon, you should tie up that dhampir up there.”

“Dhampir?” The tallest child repeats. “Is that Alucard?”

“Fuck!” another child shouts. “I _told_ you to recite the letters forward!”

“How was I supposed to know? I thought it was backwards.”

“Why would it be backwards?”

“Hold on a moment,” Adrian interrupts, and all the children’s bickering hushes. “Do you mean to tell me the lot of you were attempting to summon Dracula?”

They all nod.

Adrian slides off his perch. “Then it’s a good thing you failed. Can you imagine if Dracula of all beings manifested in front of you? What did you summon him for?”

“So we could kill him!” the youngest of them blurts out excitedly.

“And if you had failed? If he had killed all of you? Did you think a group of children could defeat Dracula?”

The tallest of them speaks up this time, with an air that belies their young age. “We would have died, but at least the Belmonts or other Speakers could have killed him.”

“It was stupid,” Adrian chides, almost hissing. Trevor blinks in surprise at his sudden vehemence regarding the matter. All of this seemed so amusing to him up till now. “He could have killed you and teleported back to safety. What then? You would have all died for nothing.”

All the children look properly admonished. None of them say a word.

Trevor flinches when Adrian points to him without looking behind him. “Untie him and take me to your Elders. I need to have a word with them. You’re all young, but doing something this stupid is beneath your understanding.”

None of them protest being ratted out and hurriedly untie Trevor off his place from the tree.

 

 _They’re delirious, they’ve lost a lot of blood_ , Julia remembers the sound of her teacher’s voice when another Speaker fainted years ago at their doorstep. She hadn’t thought of them like that back then. Back then, it was just a patient who happened to be a Speaker, who happened to share a history Julia once had. It was entirely an accident when Julia had sucked the magic out of them. There was hardly any guilt involved. It was an accident, and the young Speaker would generate their own magic again. No one got hurt.

 _No one got hurt_ was what Julia tried to tell herself every time she found a Speaker and sealed their magic in her staff. She had so little of her heritage left. The stories she once burned into her memory were slowly fading away. She would not give up this.

But something about it felt wrong, like stealing, even if most of them didn’t notice.

Julia reaches out her hand towards Sypha’s sleeping face. _Hur al ayn_ , she called her. Julia smiles at that again. Something angelic and pure, something Julia and the rest of the Speakers and Wallachia had all decided a long time ago that something Julia was not.

Julia clasps her hand, shivers and leaves the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter's a bit long, but I didn't want to update with something short after such a long hiatus. Which I'm also sorry for, by the way. Between exams and Season 2's characterization, my brain had to make some adjustments, I guess. Adrian's character might be a bit off here since I wrote some of this before S2 aired, but he'll go back to be snarky and fun later on, I suppose. Aaaannd I also have a ton of fun ideas coming up, let's see if I can manage to keep everything coherent. Hopefully, things will make more sense as the chapters go on. :')


	7. In Which Trevor Definitely Does Not Have a Crush on Alucard

Adrian lets out a laugh.

 _Charming bastard_ , Trevor thinks, not for the first time and begins to peel his apple with a sort of vigor that worries all the Speakers seated beside him. Sypha’s grandfather, who’s noticed the last four instances of this happening, finally decides to seat himself right next to Trevor and say something.

“Trevor, is everything all right?”

“Fine,” Trevor snaps.

The Elder gives him that look, the one Sypha had apparently inherited from him. One of judgement and disbelief with his eyebrow perked up.

“He’s full of shit,” Trevor finally bursts out, and one of the Speakers flinches at his language. “He’s known you all for five minutes and he’s already sweet talked his entire audience? I don’t believe it. Maybe he’s not aligned with Dracula’s forces, but he’s definitely involved with some other sinister plot.”

“Or perhaps we Speakers are just thrilled to see a living legend.”

“Living legend?” Trevor repeats, pausing his assault on the apple to the relief of the Speakers around him.

“Stories of Dracula’s son have been in our collective myth for generations. Sypha never told you?”

“Uh, no. At least not that I remember.” He feels a sudden ache in his heart at the mention of Sypha. He wants to ask the Elder exactly what stories exist about Dracula’s son, but his mood is suddenly deflated. And he’d rather hear them from Sypha.

He watches Adrian laugh again and wonders what _she_ would think of him.

 

It’s the faint prickle of magic that wakes her, like hair standing on end in instinctual fear. This is not Speaker magic, and it’s not Julia’s warm magic. It’s not sinister, but it’s unfamiliar, and it’s what convinces Sypha to jerk upright in her bed.

She hears a knock on Julia’s front door.

Julia does not answer with a shout or a greeting. Instead, Sypha hears her feet shuffle in the other room, like she already knows who’s at her door.

“Isaac,” comes Julia’s voice, smooth as silk. Something in her is strained.

“Julia.” His voice is deep and low, a calm surface over an ocean in turmoil. Both of them whisper, though Sypha can’t imagine who or what resides beyond this cottage that could eavesdrop. “Dear sister. Tell me you didn’t rescue another Speaker.”

Sypha freezes in her bed. She’s not in danger, she tries to tell herself, but his voice is slightly annoyed. He must have sensed her magic being a mage himself. Or perhaps Sypha’s predicament is a regular occurrence in this house.

“I may heal whomever I please.” Julia’s voice is irritated now. It sounds like the back-and-forth of an old argument.

“Do they know you’re a thief? Do they know you steal Speaker magic?”

There’s a short pause in which Julia has apparently elected to ignore his question. She hears the screech of wood on wood, of a chair being moved out of the way.

“Isaac…” Julia’s voice is so soft, Sypha has to strain to hear. “Please…You can still stop this madness. Please.”

Sypha hears the movement of fabric before Isaac’s hiss, “I did not come here to be lectured.”

“Isaac!” The screech of wood again and frantic steps. Then the front door being jarred open. “Isaac, wait! Please!”

“Stay here, Julia. You’ll be safe. The demons will not harm you behind this threshold.”

“Isaac!”

The door slams shut, and the silence is palpable. Julia is disturbed, and Sypha’s overcome with the desire to comfort her somehow, despite knowing it’s not her place.

 

“Did you hear all that nonsense?”

Sypha sits, legs hanging over the bed, now in her Speaker robes again. They’re old and tattered and still smell like blood, but they’re familiar and bring her comfort even if she aches all over.

Julia sits across from her, on a chair which previously held a stack of books until she moved the pile to the side, and decided to keep some distance between the two of them.

So. Julia used to be a Speaker. There’s no kind way to start that conversation, and Sypha’s not sure if she’s earned enough of this woman’s friendship to warrant it. She wants to tell her it’s all right, that Sypha didn’t particularly care whether people respected or followed her traditions. That it was Julia’s choice. But none of that seems right. And what did Julia care if one of her patients thought all those things?

“I know you didn’t take magic from me,” Sypha says instead. “I would have sensed it.”

Julia smiles. It’s condescending in a way, but Sypha can’t fault her for that when there’s a melancholic look in her eyes. “You wouldn’t have.”

“I would,” Sypha insists, and places her hands over Julia’s. She feels a connection vaguely, between herself, Julia and Julia’s staff, like a gentle, winding pathway of stones and grass down a slope. She releases herself to her, letting the magic flow and fill Julia’s staff. A sudden weariness overcomes her and she has to shake herself. “See?”

Julia’s eyes widen in surprise.

“You’re very kind, Sypha Belnades.” And then, to Sypha’s shock, she leans in and pulls back a lock of her hair. Sypha blushes. “You remind me of why humanity is worth all the struggles of life.” If Julia notices how flustered she is, she makes no mention of it. Instead she stands and opens the door to the little room she’s kept Sypha in.

“But that’s enough. It’s time for you to go home.”

 

“I’m honestly surprised you don’t have a Sypha-detector installed in your ass somewhere.”

Helena’s crude comment is met with a grunt from her brother. He’s not in the mood, he wants to say, but lately, it seems, he’s never in the mood. Adrian, to Trevor’s absolute displeasure, lets out a short bark of laughter.

“You shouldn’t even be here,” Trevor remarks to Adrian. He leans up momentarily from the little knapsack he’s put together to glare at him.

“Why ever not?” comes Adrian’s light tease of a voice. “I expected more hospitality from the legendary Belmonts.”

“Don’t be rude, Trevor,” Helena admonishes. There’s a faint note of laughter in her voice. _God_ , she’s really enjoying this.

“I’m not being rude.” He’s losing. This argument. Everything. He half wishes the sun would set and the demon horde would come down already so he could at least let all of his frustrations out on some twin-headed hellspawn. Or die. “If my mother finds out there’s something in this house that walks with vampire blood in it, she’ll kill you and the both of us.”

“I’ll risk it, on the off-chance that your mother is slightly more intelligent than you.”

Helena snorts.

Trevor gives her a glare. “Whose side are you on?”

“His,” she admits, jabbing a thumb in Adrian’s direction. “He’s hot.”

Adrian, to Trevor’s astonishment, turns a deep shade of red. He clears his throat. “Thank you.”

“Oh, ho, ho.” Trevor points and laughs. “I found your weakness. Compliments!”

“From anyone other than you, yes.”

“Am I so special to you, radiant dhampir of mine?”

“Shut up,” Adrian snaps. “Or I’ll stake myself.”

Trevor doesn’t have a response to that, because at that very moment, just as he’s about to leave in search of Sypha, the door bursts open and Sypha is standing at its threshold, looking flushed but otherwise unharmed.

“I ran!” she huffs, chest heaving from exertion. “Before the hordes could come down!”

But Trevor could care less for that. He drops his knapsack and swoops Sypha up in his arms, embracing her tightly.

A strained voice manages to make its way out of Sypha. “Ah, Trevor, stop! You’re squishing me!”

He releases his grip over her, but doesn’t let go. “You’re safe,” he breathes with relief into her shoulder.

“Yes, I am,” comes her muffled curt voice. “I’m not a baby.” She wriggles a little in his grasp, like she’s trying to snake her way out of him, but he doesn’t let her. Instead, he grips her under her legs and picks her up.

Sypha squeals and playfully cries out, “Unhand me, brute!”

“Brute? I’m your husband!”

Sypha deflates at the mention of that and leans her chin on his shoulder. Trevor can practically see her pouting. She doesn’t say anything at first, and then Trevor realizes she’s staring at Adrian.

“Hello, Sypha Belnades.” Adrian sounds almost _gentlemanly_. Trevor wants to spit on him.

“Hello, murderer,” Sypha responds curtly. Adrian doesn’t take well to that. Trevor could _kiss_ her right now. But he has something else on his mind.

He adjusts her position on his shoulder, so that it’s more comfortable for both of them and makes his way up the stairs. As he begins his ascent, he turns to Adrian.

“You really should get out of here before our mother sees you.” Trevor doesn’t wait for a snarky response, although for some reason, Adrian doesn’t seem to have one this time. Helena calls up after him.

“You’re just going to leave your shit all over the place?”

“I thought you were used to picking up after all my messes?”

Helena ignores that remark and shouts with a wink, “Don’t make too much noise!”

“Oh, fuck off, Helena.”

He doesn’t see Adrian at the bottom of the steps, cringing at the implication of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> None of you understand how much it pains me to update this fic. Not that I don’t enjoy writing it or something, but this is the first time I’m trying to just let go and write. No consistency? No research? No prior planning? Yeah, it’s awful and it’s killing me. Yet here I am, a martyr, writing this for all of you. Tell me you love me in the comments.


	8. In Which Sypha Expresses Murderous Intent For Multiple People

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for menstruation in this chapter and the next.

Trevor wakes up soaking wet.

He turns over in a half-daze, still too sleepy to care what has currently assaulted the bottom half of his bed. “Did we go swimming last night?” he mutters on the off-chance that Sypha is up.

Her response is to tear the covers off them. Trevor bothers to turn. Both their nightgowns and the sheets are drenched in blood.

Sypha sits straight up. “I knew I wasn’t a weak bitch,” she says, apparently in reference to her emotional upheaval the few days before. Her eyebrow twitches in vague annoyance. They’ll have to clean the room _again_.

“You had every right to be upset,” Trevor replies, hugging his pillow.

“You’re surprisingly calm with half my menstrual blood all over you.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Sypha prods him. “Get up,” she snaps.

Trevor groans.

“Get up, you filthy animal.”

Trevor ignores her a second time, and she foregoes trying to recruit him to clean the room with her. Sypha stands, on her tip-toes and with her legs awkwardly apart like she’s trying not to spill something and waddles over to the nearest piece of cloth she can find—a blanket on the dresser—and shoves it between her legs.

“We’ve been married for what, two days?” Trevor says, finally bothering to sit up. “And you’ve already destroyed so many of my things. Was this your plan all along?”

“To thwart the Belmonts from the inside out? You’ve caught me.”

He snorts with a laugh as she wipes the blood off her, in whatever way she can. Most of it has stained her clothes and would decidedly not come out without a good scrub. She realizes it’ll take more than a wad of cotton to get the blood off and returns back to the bed.

“Are the Speakers not leaving?” Trevor asks.

“Why?” Sypha shoves her pillow onto his face and attempts to murder him. “You want me to leave? Are you sick of being married to me already?”

“Let’s not pretend we both aren’t,” he says, shoving the pillow out of his face.

Sypha snorts a laugh at that.

“But seriously, I thought you’d want to leave with them. Didn’t you put something in your dowry or whatever that you didn’t want me tying you down, all that?”

“My marriage contract,” she corrects. It’s a novel concept for him, and as irritating as he finds it, he can’t blame Speakers for making contracts and laws for everything. “And yes. But I’m genuinely worried for you and your family. We both know none of you would survive without me.”

“Speaking of Speakers—hah—” It’s not the first time he’s made that joke and he gets hit with the pillow again. “—Your grandfather told me about Dracula’s son. How the Speakers have a myth about him. You never told me about that.”

“I didn’t?” Sypha muses.

In fact, even if she hadn’t, she never does divulge the story to him, because at that moment a stern holler comes from downstairs. It’s Sonia, demanding that he come down this instant. Trevor sighs.

“Well, I’d better get this blood off me somehow.”

 

Trevor watches as Miriam coaxes her falcon onto her hand. It’s a sleek, gray thing, a gift from an Arab vampire hunting tribe that used birds to fight the undead, and had, in turn, passed the skill onto the Belmonts. Miriam trusts it and the red-brown hawk on its perch the most of all her birds. As she nears the edge of the cliff Trevor hangs over, she pulls the hood off its eyes and lets it stretch its wings for a second.

Down below, his mother steers a horse around the grass, trailing the bloodied corpse of a demon behind her.

Beside him, Sypha sits with a book in her hand, Miriam’s old text on falconry that had been gifted with the bird, the Moamyn. Her eyes scan through the words swiftly, almost as if she’s skimming through something she’s already memorized just for the purpose of revising.

Trevor breathes deep and revels in the feeling of some semblance of normalcy.

“Hello,” Adrian says, coming up behind them like a shadow in the dark. And there it goes. All semblances of normalcy shattered.

“Hello, Adrian,” Sypha says, not bothering to look up. That gives Trevor some small sense of triumph. At least Sypha doesn’t care enough about him to be at his hands constantly.

“We should find my father,” he says with an urgency that contrasts the peace of this chill morning.

“We need to rest,” Trevor replies immediately. “We’re human.”

“You slept,” Adrian argues. “You’ve rested. Dracula will destroy everything if we don’t do something. Isn’t this what you Belmonts are for?”

Trevor bites his tongue only when he feels Sypha’s warning grip in his sleeve. She still hasn’t bothered to look up.

“Yes,” Sypha responds. Her eyes arrest on the last few words of the chapter and she snaps the book shut. “And we will. But what do you suggest we do? Run off haphazardly into the night?”

“We need to figure out the location of my father’s castle.” Trevor resists the urge to roll his eyes or grunt in annoyance. At the very least, Sypha doesn’t really seem to care about what Adrian’s saying either and stretches her arms out above her with a small grunt.

“And how do you plan on doing that?”

Adrian is silent for a moment.

“I thought perhaps you might know something. Belmonts and Speakers deal with the dark after all, and from what my father has told me, you Belmonts came here to Wallachia specifically to hunt Dracula.”

Trevor watches Miriam release her falcon to the skies. It swoops down, turning sharply as Sonia’s horse does, and manages to grasp the demon remains in its claws.

“There’s a library,” he answers.

“Not for long.”

Trevor’s stomach drops at the sound of that voice. Letitia. He refrains from calling her less kind nicknames out of a shred of respect for her.

Letitia didn’t look particularly vindictive _before_ Sypha had turned around, but once she does, Letitia goes completely meek, and adjusts her glasses apologetically.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” she mumbles to Trevor’s feet.

“Are you?” Sypha starts, and Trevor has to hold his arm out to silence her. She gives him a very familiar glare, the one she takes to when Trevor keeps her from starting fights she has every right to start. But now’s not the time. Not when hordes and Dracula and God Knows What Else is lurking on the horizon about to wipe out humanity.

He tries to tell himself the same thing when he wants to throttle Adrian as he glances confused between the three of them.

“What do you mean?” Trevor asks, ignoring him.

“Miriam,” Letitia answers. “She wants to hide the villagers in there. It’s underground, inaccessible to anything non-magical, the perfect hiding spot for a bunch of scared, useless humans. Miriam’s going to get her way. She always has her way, and when Father gets home…” Letitia glances nervously at Trevor when she mentions him. “When Father gets home, she’ll have her way. It’s not like he cares about the damn library, anyway. He’s never cared for anything he can’t sharpen his knife against.”

“What does it matter?” comes Sypha’s sharp snap. It does matter, and it would obviously matter to Sypha. Trevor knows she cares, but she’s just being difficult. Part of him appreciates it.

Adrian does not, however, and quips with a faint smile, “A mob of scared, superstitious humans in a library curated with flammable objects about the undead? How could that possibly go wrong?”

He only realizes his opinion isn’t needed when Sypha gives him a sharp glare.

“And what would you have us do?” Trevor asks his sister.

Letitia crosses her arms. “I don’t know. Go in there soon. Take whatever you need. I don’t want to risk losing any chance we had at destroying Dracula’s forces just because our father is an incompetent piece of shit who’d listen to a teenager before the rest of us.”

Adrian looks like he wants to boast about being right, but he says nothing.

Trevor stands, pressing his hand to Sypha’s hair, which pacifies her about Letitia existing somewhat. “Looks like we’re going researching.” Sypha frowns. “Don’t do that. I thought you loved researching, beloved wife of mine.” He pinches her cheek.

Sypha says nothing but faintly, Trevor swears he can see Adrian gagging.

 


	9. In Which Letitia Tries to Make Amends

“I’ll help you.”

“I don’t want your help.”

A pity. Trevor knows Sypha and Letitia would have gotten along well if Letitia hadn’t made such an awful first impression. And been an awful person in general. Which he knows and has always known, but it might have been nice if Sypha could have gotten to enjoy the good side of her without knowing the bad. She would never forgive Letitia. She never forgave people who hurt Trevor.

Trevor dares come in between them. “We’ll have an extra hand to hold more books. Besides, you have my permission to shut her up again if she annoys you.”

Letitia swallows and Sypha narrows her eyes and smiles in triumph at her.

He’s not quite sure why Letitia is working so hard to make Sypha like her, however. Maybe she’s afraid of her, or genuinely apologetic. He’s never understood her twisted mind. But he still doesn’t want to leave her behind. She was rude and awful, but could at least be coaxed into holding her tongue, and her intellect was second only to Sypha’s. She had compiled the current family bestiary, after all.

“I have a question.”

Adrian, on the other hand, Trevor wishes they had left behind.

Trevor turns behind him and grunts, not slowing his pace down the stairs to the library. A question from Adrian probably only meant another headache.

Adrian doesn’t wait for any proper sort of sign to go on and continues lightly, “Is the primary purpose of this place to house books or to flagrantly display your wealth, because we’ve been walking for the better part of what? Twenty minutes? And I’ve yet to see a single piece of parchment. Stairs, on the other hand, I’ve seen a good deal of. More than I ever have in my life.” When all Trevor responds with is a furrowed brow, Adrian concludes, “And I’d like to remind you I grew up in Dracula’s castle.”

“Are you always this cranky?”

“I’m not cranky, Belmont.”

“He’s getting cranky because he’s hungry,” Trevor teases to the women behind him. “Letitia, give him your blood to shut him up.”

“Why me!” Letitia protests from the back.

“Well, I’m not going to offer my wife up to him, am I?”

“At least be a gentleman and offer yourself up to him.”

When Adrian gives a mischievous glance to her, Letitia squeals outright, “Don’t even think about it, vampire, or I’ll set you on fire with this torch!”

“You know,” Adrian says, turning back to Trevor. “I think my best bet would be you.”

“I’m afraid I’d have to agree with you there. All the women in my family are batshit.”

Adrian gives him a—was it disappointed?—glance, and Sypha giggles behind them.

The rest of their descent is followed by silence.

 

“It’s disgusting,” Adrian says to the cabinet of vampire skulls on display.

Sypha can’t really say she disagrees with him. She had always found the Belmont Hold a valuable store of knowledge, but she’d be lying if there weren’t things in here she didn’t particularly like. Their brazen display of the undead being one of them.

But she says nothing and continues to page through the large tome in her hands. Only when she feels something wet dribbling down her leg does she close her eyes and snap the book shut. Adrian doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to her, thankfully, so she slips away without him saying so much as a word.

“God is testing me today,” Sypha mutters to herself as she sees the blood dripping onto her sandals.

She glances around herself just to make sure no one is watching and wipes her leg with the end of her robes. Thank God Speakers wore black.

“Sypha.”

She startles at Adrian’s voice. Sypha swivels around, trying to decide whether she should be apologetic or defensive about the blood over her feet, but when she turns to see him, Adrian is holding out a clump of moss in his hand.

“Why do you have this?”

It’s a benign question, one out of curiosity, but Sypha immediately notices it’s stirred something like a flinch out of Adrian.

“My…my mother is—was…a doctor,” he explains hurriedly, but his hands hover over hers for just a second too long. His fingers twitch, and Sypha brings her hand over his. “She kept gauze on her for wounded or menstruating patients and I happened to have some still on me.”

“Thank you,” she responds, smiling.

There’s another flash of something in Adrian’s eyes—something like relief. A few thoughts run through Sypha’s head, the strongest of which insists that she should reassure Adrian. That she’s a Speaker and would not judge him for anything. But she swallows it down, refrains from making any assumptions for fear of offending him.

Sypha smiles and says again, “Thank you.”

 

It’s Sypha who screams in triumph and interrupts the silence of their browsing first.

“I found it!” she squeals excitedly, trailing a long piece of parchment behind her. Trevor can’t imagine what she’s found, but he hopes it’s more useful than a leaflet on how to remove Valkyrie ichor off fabric.

“You found what?” Trevor asks, tossing his book aside. He envies Sypha sometimes. He’d been taught how to read Romanian like any proper son of a nobleman, but Sypha had both the freedom and drive to learn multiple languages. She could access more of this library than he could.

Her shout summons both Letitia and Adrian to her side. Letitia holds tightly to some other book she’s found and Adrian returns to them empty-handed.

“A map!” Sypha beams. “Of Dracula’s castle.” She presents her find, and while Letitia and Trevor look over it in curiosity, Adrian runs a gloved finger along the path labeled as the entranceway and frowns.

“Yes, but it’s all wrong,” he says, ignoring Sypha’s frown. “When was this drawn up?”

“Probably the late 11th century,” Letitia answers promptly. “That was when our last ancestor had any access to Dracula’s castle. Why?”

“Because the castle has changed. This—” He points to something Trevor can’t see and then moves his finger over to the labeled laboratory. “Should be here. The castle changes.”

“According to what?” Trevor asks.

“According to his whim. He can rotate the rooms. Restructure floors entirely.” Adrian stares at the map for another second.

“Would that be a problem if we were to enter it?”

“No. He can’t do it all at once. It requires concentration. He couldn’t direct a horde attack or fight us at the same time as moving the rooms.”

“And what about moving the entire castle?”

“Actually,” Letitia interjects, eyes lighting up. “I might have a solution to—”

She goes quiet when a bell rings in the distance. Trevor recognizes it as the way his family communicates from above ground to down below in the Belmont library.

“Oh, that must be…” Letitia trots away, still clinging to the book in her hand. She’s up and down the stairs quickly, before Trevor or Sypha or Adrian can contemplate or discuss anything else. She returns and conveys the message with a cold sigh.

“Father is home,” she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update, I've been busy! :') (So much for a regular updating schedule lol)
> 
> On the bright side, I have the next 2 chapters written up already, so next update will be this Sunday. Anyway, this chapter's a bit boring since it's just kinda in-between stuff, but I promise the next two will be much more fun.


	10. In Which Sypha Opposes Trevor’s Father and Almost Turns Trevor Straight by How Fearless She’s Being

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a Twilight reference in this chapter, tee hee.

Sypha had never met Trevor’s father, oddly enough. He never happened to be home when the Speakers were in Fieni. She knew little of him. Trevor rarely spoke of him, rarely ever wanted to speak of him. From what she surmised, he wasn’t a tyrant of a father, but he wasn’t particularly warm either.

She sits apprehensively at the dinner table. Trevor is seated to her left, Miriam to her right. Far to the left at one end of the table is an empty seat for Trevor’s father. The other end seats Sonia. Helena and Letitia sit across from Sypha.

Adrian had elected to stay in the library, digging up whatever information he could. No one protested his decision. Trevor’s father may not have been a tyrant, but he probably wouldn’t have been thrilled to see a vampire seated with his family.

Especially when a Speaker had married his son.

The Belmont women chatter amongst themselves, but Sypha can’t bring herself to say anything for once. She feels Trevor’s hand in hers and turns to him. He gives a small smile and squeeze, and then lets go when the door to the dining hall creaks open.

The table goes completely hush when Gabriel Belmont enters the dining hall. Sypha supposes it’s been a long time, because according to Trevor, it’s always been a long time. She knew he would travel far sometimes on hunting missions. He had taken Trevor and his sisters on them occasionally, but for the most part, the rest of the family stayed closer to home. This was all according to Trevor.

What Trevor had failed to mention, however, was how much of a resemblance he bore to Gabriel. Trevor had the same face shape, the same inklings of a beard and the same light eyes. But where Trevor had little sparks of confidence in his eyes, Gabriel exuded confidence all over. He takes his place in his chair and speaks in a commanding voice.

“I’ll spare us of the niceties and get straight to the point. The horde attack, you’ve all noticed I’m sure, that’s been harassing us every night for the last few days.”

Miriam mutters, barely audible, “It’s always just work with him.”

“There are rumors flying that this is vengeance for the death of his wife at Targoviste last year.”

“The Speakers saw an apparition of Dracula back then that vowed to destroy humanity.” Sypha only realizes her error in interrupting when she sees the offense written all over Gabriel’s face and the deathly quiet of the rest of the table. She makes no apology, however, and continues to stare directly at Gabriel. She could not see any sense in being afraid of a man.

“So,” he replies, and Sypha can’t tell if his voice is laced with amusement or anger. “You’re the Speaker my son chose as a wife.” A short pause. “I can’t say I agree with his choice.”

“Gabriel, don’t be a dick,” Sonia bursts out, annoyed, and all the Belmont children sigh and lower their heads. Sypha doesn’t know how to react and begins to regret marrying Trevor. Saving him didn’t seem worth all the dowry he agreed to give her.

But, at the very least, their father goes quiet at his wife’s rebuke. He changes back to his original topic. He could always harass Trevor’s wife later, Sypha supposes.

“As ill-mannered as your wife is, Trevor, she’s right,” Gabriel continues on. “This is all Dracula’s doing, and these horde attacks will not cease unless Dracula dies.”

“He’s been dormant for decades, however,” Sypha says, again, and this time, Trevor tries to keep her quiet by kicking her gently under the table. She ignores him. When Gabriel gives her another glare, she continues on, undeterred.

“You said I was right. I’m a Speaker. Speakers and Belmonts have always worked in conjunction with one another, so I don’t see why you won’t want to listen to me. If anything, your son made the right decision in marrying me. You don’t have to go chasing after Speaker myth in the wind. You have me at your disposal.”

For a minute the whole table is palpably anxious. Then Gabriel smiles. “Very well,” he says. “Continue.”

“We have an old story in our myth. That when Lord Dracula rises again, he will meet his demise by a hunter, a scholar and a solider. Speakers and Belmonts work in conjunction, but never together. So I surmise the hunter and scholar are Trevor and I.”

“And why shouldn’t the hunter be me?” Gabriel’s eyes flash intelligently.

“It could be. But all of us need to fight Dracula regardless. The three heroes in the myth are meant to fight Dracula, but he has an entire army that needs to be dealt with first. We should make our way to Dracula’s castle as soon as we can.”

Gabriel muses on her words and then concludes flatly, “No.”

“What?” Sypha has to force herself not to stand in opposition. “Why?”

“We will wait for Dracula’s castle to appear closer to us, and then move towards him. What will you do otherwise? Chase after a castle that can move at a whim?”

“You have an entire library of knowledge right here! There could be anything in there to aid us. And the knowledge of my people!”

“We will wait,” Gabriel says stubbornly.

“People will die if we just stand by and do nothing!”

“And more people will die if we fail by doing something stupid.” Gabriel turns his attention to Trevor, instead and spits, “You chose a soft wife, Trevor.”

Sypha stands then, fire in her eyes. “If you have an issue with me, you can speak to me directly.”

Gabriel glances back at Sypha. Glances to his wife, his children, and then pushes his chair back with a screech and stands. His gaze never leaves Sypha. She can’t believe she saw any of Trevor in his eyes. He’s all hardness and opposition.

“I’m no longer hungry, Sonia,” Gabriel says, and takes his leave. For a moment, everyone is quiet, until Sypha finally decides to sit back in her chair.

Trevor slaps his hand against the table and presses his fingers to his temple. “Holy shit, Sypha,” he says.

 

The evening air is still. Sypha would have admired the sunset, if it didn’t now herald an oncoming slaughter. She runs her hand along the railing of the double staircase, picks up dust with her fingers and rubs it off. There was a time dust would never settle over this stone, when the Speakers came to visit, and Sypha would race Trevor to see who could slide down the staircase faster.  

“You’re fucking amazing, you know that right?”

Sypha turns, and Trevor’s hand is on her shoulder before she can acknowledge him.

“I know,” she says, giving him a smug smile.

Trevor doesn’t respond to her smug grin with anything but a heavy sigh.

“What’s wrong?” she sings. He sighs again, and Sypha’s not sure if she should be worried.

“Sypha.” Trevor lays his hands over her shoulders. Sypha glares at the offending limbs as if she’s trying to melt them off with her eyeballs. It’s not the contact that elicits the response, but the way he does it. His stance heralds an oncoming headache. Almost like the evening heralding the night horde. “Promise me you’ll stay on your toes regarding Adrian.”

She didn’t expect that statement. Sypha tilts her head. “Why?” Half of her knows not to ask, because—again, headache. But she can’t help her curiosity.

“Because I am hopelessly and irrevocably in love with him.” He admits it out of nowhere, but Sypha is too jaded by all of Trevor’s previous romantic escapades to even be surprised. “And you are the only person I trust with that information. My judgement is obviously too clouded to see through him.”

“You don’t exactly have the best judgement regarding anything, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

Trevor pouts and Sypha laughs. She presses her nose into his shoulder and blinks up at him.

“Why are you being cute?”

“I’m always cute,” Sypha argues.

“Sypha, seriously.”

“I _am_ being serious. About being cute and the stuff with Adrian,” she adds when he gives her a doubtful look.  

“Do you trust him?”

“I don’t know.” She pauses, stares off into the evening sky. “But I don’t see why we shouldn’t. I doubt someone would claim to be Dracula’s son only to promise to aid us.”

“Okay, good,” Trevor replies. “That’s what I thought but I wanted to make sure it wasn’t the attraction talking.”

“Aw,” Sypha says and grabs a fistful of Trevor’s cheek. “You’re so grown up.”

“Ow, Syha, stohp!”

Sypha lets go, giggling and wrapping her arms around Trevor’s. He glances down at her, eyebrows furrowed slightly like he’s smiling reluctantly. She leads them to sitting on the staircase and wraps her arms around his waist, humming into his shoulder.

Neither of them say anything for a while. Sypha thinks of things to say or things he might say, but they’ve known each for so long, they don’t need to. She knows he’s grateful and happy with her, and that he knows she feels the same. They both can just stare out in the sky and enjoy each other’s company.

 

It would be the last time they enjoyed anything together before a fire and a purge destroyed their families.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, so I’ve decided to cheat a little bit and do a timeskip after this. Yeah, sorry, sorry. This is what happens when you start off a fanfic as a joke and then don’t commit to anything but write all of it out of guilt. Anyway, this is a mess. So HOPEFULLY after this timeskip where I can just move everything where I want it to be, there’ll be more consistency (hopefully). The villains are finally going to appear, and I already have the chapter written up so expect another update next week. After that…who knows…


	11. In Which Carmilla Makes Her Entrance

_Cold_. Deathly, unearthly _cold_.

Dracula’s castle. His throne room. It’s Dracula’s castle. Of course it’s fucking cold. The ceilings are high and the floor is made of stone, the room is dark, always dark. And it’s night time. Of course it’s cold, you tell yourself. But this isn’t right. Something in the air drops, like a weight.

The second thing you notice is the fog. First you think your vision is going. And then you notice Dracula, who’d been still as the statues lining his halls up till now. He doesn’t sit up or cry out. That would be too dramatic a gesture. One of his fingers twitches, and it’s enough for you to know it’s not just _you_.

The throng hushes around the same time. Vampires in all sorts of attire, with all sorts of attitudes, as diverse as the humans they had recently vowed to wipe out.

The door to the throne room opens and a woman—a vampire—steps through, heeled boots screeching on the tile. Her outfit matches the color of her hair—all black, and men’s clothes, though from what century or what country, it’s difficult for anyone here to tell. It could be an assortment of garments from all the men whose throats she’s ripped out. Little trophies she’s collected over the years.

No one knows.

All anyone knows is that she’s powerful. More powerful, even, some might wager, than Dracula. But who would dare say?

“Dracula, my son.” Her voice is deep, unshakeable. She steps closer to his throne than anyone else might dare. Reaches her hand out for him to kiss it. “How I’ve missed you, darling of mine.”

“Mother,” Dracula greets humbly. He bows his head, kisses the back of her hand. Some of the vampires squirm where they stand.

Who was this woman that Vlad Dracula bowed in deference to?

You wonder.

Hypothetical you, of course. No human could ever trespass here. Not unless…

“Isaac,” one of the Devil Forgemasters whispers. “Who is that?”

Hector is not nearly as perceptive as his peer beside him. Isaac is wiser, more knowledgeable. When he didn’t spend time competing with Hector to create better devils, he spent it in Dracula’s study, reading whatever he could get his hands on. Hector prefers to keep to himself. To his meek kittens and soft rats, and sing them to sleep alongside him.

But Isaac is not sure of his answer. He has guesses. But the wisdom in him tells him to shut up.

The woman’s eyes slide over to him, as if she knows what he thinks.

“Who the fuck are you?”

This slurred cry is met with a few turned heads. Not this woman’s though. That would imply anyone but Dracula is of any relevance to her. The vampire who expressed this outburst seems strangely at ease, partly irritated. The vampires around him all look appalled.

“Jesus Christ, Godbrand,” Hector whispers. But he’s forgotten about, momentarily.

The woman’s eyes flit back to Dracula, and with a wry smile she says, “I didn’t think I’d need an introduction.”

Dracula smiles back, unmoving. “Unfortunately, the younger vampires here are ignorant of their elders.”

And Hector blinks and the woman is towering over Godbrand. He flinches back in surprise, although he’s hardly intimidated. His tactless behavior is going to get him killed one day.

The woman is undeterred, and smiles again. “Shall I show you, then?” She reaches out one of her talon-sharp nails and rakes it gently along Godbrand’s throat. For a moment, Hector assumes he’s still out of fear, but when he sees the sweat rolling down Godbrand’s cheek and the muted whine that makes its way out of him, he realizes _she’s_ the one doing it to him.

Whatever _it_ is.

“I am Carmilla,” the woman introduces. “Countess Karnstein, mother of all vampires.” She smiles at Godbrand and then turns away from him, letting her hand go lax. Godbrand is finally released from her spell, and he doubles over and lets out an involuntary cough. “You would all do well to remember me. Betray my son, and I will make sure none of you see the dark of night ever again.”

No one says anything for a good few seconds—Hector counts them, painfully slow and prolonged, and he wonders, briefly, if it’s more of Carmilla’s magic—until the silence is broken by Dracula’s harsh laugh.

“Are such theatrics necessary, mother?” Dracula stands from his throne, finally, and stretches out his hand. “Let me show you to your quarters. I’d have a servant do it, but I don’t want the other demons in here to unravel in fear of your presence.”

“Such cheek, child.” Carmilla laughs with him. She follows him out with another wayward glance at his generals, but says nothing to them.

And then the air, palpably still, finally goes lax. Hector sees all the vampires’ shoulders fall as they let out held breaths.

“Fuck that woman,” Godbrand concludes.

 

The night comes to him in dreams, in the reflection of whatever pond he occasionally washes his face in when he can manage it, in a drunk haze, in the tankard of beer he swallows less out of desire and more out of obligation.

An obligation to forget.

That night is the only thing that keeps him from drowning himself, laying down in a ditch and letting the cold take him. For some reason, it’s the only thing that keeps him alive. He’s not sure why, or what about it—maybe that he had been useful or loved in some way. Or it was just the tenderness of it all. God be damned if he could ever figure out what he was feeling.

Trevor curls up in his cloak and tries not to remember.

But he does, anyway.

 

Sypha rarely ever cried, save for silly things: getting hit with a candle holder and screaming hysterically for attention, bursting into tears because someone had taken her favorite flavor of shaved ice from her or sniffing into her robes when her chicken had died. Her crying spells only ever seemed to be the other side of her otherwise bubbly, happy-go-lucky personality—an outburst that ended as abruptly as it started, rather than a genuine display of fragility.

But genuinely, truly crying? Sypha didn’t do that.

Trevor had known her his whole life, in bits and pieces as the Speakers traveled, but whatever time he spent with her was precious. They played with each other, confided in each other, even tried to kiss once before puking into the same lake together. It was always Trevor who sought her for comfort, Trevor who would burst into tears because Helena had told him a ghost story, Trevor who would curl into her and cry when he couldn’t talk about his problems.

Sypha never really cried, and it was why that night had made such an impression on him.

When he sat her down on the bed, she grabbed fistfuls of his shirt and sobbed into his chest. She felt so small, suddenly, as small as his niece had huddled to his chest, and for once in his life, Trevor had no idea what to do with Sypha.

He held her, let her wrack with relentless sobs, pressed his chin to her head and cradled her. Never once did he ask her what was wrong or try to pull away. He couldn’t remember how long he had held her like that, but it felt like hours.

Finally, she pulled away from him and with her fists still tight in his shirt, she cried, “I…I was afraid.” It was all she could manage before losing herself to sniffs.

Trevor held her again and spoke gently into her hair, “Afraid of what?”

Only in retrospect does he think about what was on her mind. Did her mind hover over replying with his name? With his family’s?

“Afraid…” Sypha parted from him just to wipe her eyes on her sleeve. “Afraid of…” She sniffed again and buried her face back into his shirt. “I don’t know!” she said. But the pause was enough for him to understand exactly what she meant.

“Sypha…you…Did you really think I’d…?”

“I don’t know!” she cried out again, voice muffled. But it was an admittance. Yes, she did. Despite years and years of trust and love and friendship, she really did think that he would hurt her. Or force her. Whether it was out of family obligation or whether she feared he was awful underneath it all, he didn’t know. But it was enough to send him reeling. He wanted to cry out, _Never, never_. He would _never_ do that to her.

“I’m sorry,” he said instead. And he still remembers the way Sypha parted from him and stared up at him surprised with tear-stained cheeks. “I’m sorry that I made you feel that way.”

And finally, it seemed, Trevor had done something to pacify her cries. She pulled apart from him, wiped her face again and looked up at him.

“Trevor,” she said.

“Yes?”

“If I liked men, I would kiss you right now.”

Trevor let out a small laugh and Sypha smiled weakly in return. He wiped the rest of her tears with his knuckles.

“Come on. Let’s go to sleep. You must be exhausted.”

And he still remembers how she had curled up like a cat next to him. And how she cried softly, soundlessly, and he knew there was something else troubling her. But for now, she was happy enough, happy enough to sleep soundly in his arms.

 

Trevor shivers under the tree he’s made his bed and wonders if he’ll ever be able to feel that sort of tenderness again.


End file.
